Kobo Vox Android Tablet Coming on 17 October for $250

Kobo had a minor booboo today. Their new Android tablet, the 7" Kobo Vox, has shown up on Futureshop.ca with a spec sheet, ship date, and a retail of $250 CAD.

Update: The product page is down now. Wow that was quick. It went up and down in less that 2 hours. Fortunately I grabbed a copy and saved it here. I also got a screenshot.

It's now confirmed that the Vox is an Android tablet, but it's not clear yet what OS it's running. The 7" screen has a resolution of 1024x600, and the Vox also has Wifi, 8GB Flash storage, microSD card slot, a speaker, and if the product listing is to be believed it will have access to the Android Market.

Battery life is estimated to be around 6 hours and it will weigh 400 grams. Edit: I also just got a hint that not all of the specs are correct, so I wouldn't rely on them.

I'm a little surprised to see this tablet, but not by much I'd already gotten a hint a few days back that Kobo would be releasing this tablet, and that the FCC paperwork was just a convenience, not a sign that they had passed on the tablet.

click to embiggen

But I'm also not surprised to see this because I know that Kobo have been working on an Android tablet for at least a year now. In fact, I have a photo from last October of what might be the Kobo Vox. It was called the Kobo Color back then but it's basically the same tablet.

Given that they have been working on it for over a year, I'm hoping against hope that the Vox will have the enhanced Kobo app that can be found on the HTC Flyer. That app is incredibly sophisticated and does a lot more in terms of annotation than any of the other mainstream reading apps.

Amazon Fire is only going to be sold and supported in the US for the foreseeable future. This Kobo leak is for Canada; presumably other markets which Amazon will, for the time being, ignore in the tablet space.

“The Kobo Vox combines everything great about the Kobo with amazing new features that bring your reading experience to new levels. You’ll enjoy hours of reading on the 7-inch colour display, downloading from a selection of 2.5 million titles, and even surfing the web and downloading apps from the Android market. The Kobo Vox is the eReader that does so much more.”

Kobo’s Reading Life is being optimized for iOS and Android platforms; it sounds like it will run well on this device.